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THE INTERNAL RESISTANCE FILES
How We Know if We’re Good Enough
You can hit your biggest, wildest goals and still be terrified that you don’t really have what it takes. Here’s why it happens, and how to escape the cycle.
For years in my academic career, every paper I gave felt like I was walking a tightrope over an abyss. Any exposure of my ideas was a referendum on whether I was a star or a nonentity. And even though it mostly went well, I never felt good for long. There was always another abyss to cross.
When we feel this way, it makes sense that we set our sights on some future day when there will be no more tightropes on the horizon. At that point, we think, we’ll be so undeniably accomplished that no one will doubt we’ve got what it takes, most importantly ourselves.
I call this longed-for location Scepter Island, because it seems to promise we’ll be enthroned on some higher plane of achievement. We’ll be anointed as good enough in a way that feels permanent and unquestionable.
Trying to get to Scepter Island more or less drove my entire academic career. So I know first-hand that chasing that goal can screw up your relationship to the very thing you once loved doing.
And that’s for one very basic reason: Scepter Island is bullshit. And once you see why that’s true, it becomes clear how crucial and freeing it is to leave this fantasy behind.
The impossible final word
Why is Scepter Island bullshit? So many reasons, but I’m going to give you the three key ones.
Reason 1: Dopamine highs do not wipe out existing habitual thought patterns.
Trying to get to Scepter Island means years of wiring our brains with default thoughts like, When I achieve X, I’ll have proven I’m really good at this, where X is some major milestone or goal.
The problem is, achievement doesn’t create new thought patterns on its own.
Let’s say you hit a big-time goal in your field. The dopamine hit on the day makes you so elated you feel like you must have done it: Scepter Island Mode unlocked.
But the high doesn’t actually change our default thoughts about ourselves. Because for that, we’d…
